“99% of a smartphone’s carbon footprint is related to its production”

You led the work­ing group of think tank The Shift Pro­ject which pub­lished a report in 2018 entitled “For digit­al sobri­ety”. What did you find then?

Hugues Fer­re­b­oeuf. The aim was to ana­lyse the evol­u­tion of the envir­on­ment­al foot­print of the digit­al sec­tor¹. We found that 45% of the sector’s energy con­sump­tion is due to pro­duc­tion of equip­ment and 55% to its use. We iden­ti­fied two dynam­ics at work. On the one hand, a tech­no­lo­gic­al dynam­ic was provid­ing sig­ni­fic­ant energy effi­ciency gains with each new gen­er­a­tion of equip­ment – as such, it was pos­sible to do more with the same energy con­sump­tion. On the oth­er hand, how­ever, we observed an explo­sion in use. We also showed that improve­ments in energy effi­ciency ratio of equip­ment is not enough to com­pensate for the increase in use. In oth­er words, for digit­al tech­no­logy to be energy effi­cient, to reduce its envir­on­ment­al foot­print, we must inev­it­ably look at how to lim­it the devel­op­ment of cer­tain uses that are not very vir­tu­ous in envir­on­ment­al terms, par­tic­u­larly video!

Video now accounts for 65–70% of glob­al data flows and, with more than 300 mil­lion tonnes of CO₂ emit­ted per year, it is respons­ible for 20% of green­house gas (GHG) emis­sions in the IT sec­tor. Above all, less than 10% of the uses are pro­fes­sion­al, such as video­con­fer­en­cing or telemedi­cine. The rest is divided between view­ing video in the form of films, porn, music clips, or those little videos that are auto­mat­ic­ally triggered when you vis­it a site. These fig­ures led us to pub­lish a spe­cif­ic report in 2019³ in which we call for a reduc­tion in the weight and use of leis­ure video, which requires some form of reg­u­la­tion and there­fore soci­et­al debate.

How can we lim­it or curb usage?

It’s com­plic­ated! The prob­lem is that uses do not replace each oth­er, they add up. The switch from DVD to stream­ing, for example, has res­ul­ted in an increase in screen time. If emis­sions are increas­ing every year, it is because we are con­sum­ing more. And if we are con­sum­ing more, it is because the busi­ness mod­els of the sup­pli­ers, their mar­ket­ing and tech­no­lo­gic­al tech­niques encour­age us to con­sume more. Simple pro­cesses such as auto­mat­ic start-up of the next epis­ode in a series make us stay in front of our screens. This is called ‘addict­ive design’. Anoth­er aspect is that the cost of sub­scrip­tion, Net­flix for example, reduces the mar­gin­al cost of sub­scrip­tion for the user – that means the more you con­sume the cheap­er it is. But once we are aware of the impacts of our con­sump­tion, our inac­tion becomes rep­re­hens­ible. It is not just a ques­tion of indi­vidu­al respons­ib­il­ity: we need to change our eco­nom­ic model.

Can improve­ments and advances in tech­no­logy help to reduce energy consumption?

Yes, but this will not be enough to absorb the increase in usage. Moreover, some tech­no­lo­gies are reach­ing their phys­ic­al lim­its. In fact, we are likely to see a slow­down in energy effi­ciency gains over the next few years. We have used this ana­lys­is, which takes into account indi­vidu­al prac­tices and the struc­tur­ing of sup­ply, in a report pub­lished in Octo­ber 2020, entitled “Deploy­ing digit­al sobri­ety”⁴. The growth of digit­al uses is a sys­tem­ic phe­nomen­on in which sup­ply and demand play a role, but also the polit­ic­al and reg­u­lat­ory frame­work. To solve a sys­tem­ic prob­lem, we need a sys­tem­ic solu­tion, we need to act on the dif­fer­ent vec­tors that lead to this “over­growth”. In this report, we pub­lished a sort of meth­od­o­lo­gic­al ref­er­ence frame­work for com­pan­ies in the broad sense to help them integ­rate the prin­ciples of digit­al sobri­ety into everything that makes up their inform­a­tion sys­tem. Now that digit­al tech­no­logy is every­where, com­pan­ies can­not lim­it them­selves to a tech­no­lo­gic­al approach to the issue of sobri­ety. It is becom­ing a con­cern for top-level man­age­ment which must be integ­rated into a company’s strategy.

In con­crete terms, how can we reduce our envir­on­ment­al foot­print linked to digit­al technology?

First, by not chan­ging smart­phones so often! In France, people change their device on aver­age every 20 months. What you need to know is that 99% of the car­bon foot­print of a smart­phone is linked to its pro­duc­tion and trans­port to France. Else­where in the world, this share is 90% on aver­age. The dif­fer­ence is that elec­tri­city is very low car­bon in France… Secondly, we must avoid mul­tiply­ing gad­gets, accessor­ies, and addi­tion­al equip­ment. The num­ber of con­nec­ted objects, screens, devices, etc. per per­son in the United States is expec­ted to rise from 13 today to 35 objects in 2030. And what we see is that the growth is strongest where there is already a pleth­ora of equip­ment, namely in North Amer­ica, West­ern Europe and Japan. In oth­er words, 70 bil­lion digit­al objects will be pro­duced between now and 2030, objects that will con­sume energy to func­tion but also to be man­u­fac­tured. Finally, we must favour fixed uses over mobile uses. If you watch Net­flix, do it from home with your fibre-optic con­nec­tion rather than 5G in the metro. Bet­ter still, go spend an hour in the forest instead of watch­ing Net­flix for hours!

Digit­al resources should now be con­sidered as scarce resources, which they have not been for a long time. Before, when com­put­ing power was lim­ited, soft­ware was writ­ten care­fully to lim­it the need for com­put­ing. Let’s redis­cov­er this sobriety.